Jesse Sublett's Blog, page 14

STARS IN THE GUTTER

She belonged to the stars now… but she’d always had stars in her hair…

A quick hello today to let you know that my short story “STARS IN HER HAIR” is now live at OutoftheGutteronline.com, a great crime fiction online zine. Thanks to Joe Clifford, a cool writer / musician, for editing it and posting it here.

Some of you may have read the illustrated version on my blog here, with the lovely Mona Pitts standing in as the lady astronaut of the story.

You may recognize Mona and her work if you have already read my new novella, Grave Digger Blues, which is bulging with sexy, wild, intriguing photos of Mona and by Mona, and also work by the great Ricardo Acevedo, and Todd V. Wolfson.

And you may have heard or maybe you’d like to hear the radio version which was performed by My Terrible Self and The Big Thorne ( a k a Thorne Dreyer ) on Rag Radio on Feb 1, 2013. You can enjoy that, plus my hour long interview, with 3 songs live in the studio, here.

GRAVE DIGGER BLUES is LIVE… buy it or download a sample at iTunes or Amazon. When? Now would be good.

October Eve.

Cheers,

Jesse

 

 

Hello Again

Dear Friends,

Sorry to be a pest, but one of the main aims of this morning’s previous post was to provide a link to the podcast of my interview with Rag Radio yesterday, Feb. 1, 2013, and I see that on the emailed version of the blog, the embedded code does not appear. Here is the direct link to it: JESSE SUBLETT ON RAG RADIO PODCAST.

And here it is again: http://archive.org/details/RagRadio20...

Also, if you are in the habit of only reading the email version of my blog, you are missing out on other features, too. You don’t get the music player, for one thing, or other links which always available on my blog page. So you might want to check that out….

Have a great Super Bowl Sunday.

Cheers,

Jesse

How many Son House fans out there, like me, are also Katy Perry fans?

DARKNESS IN THE AFTERNOON

I dig things that are cool.

RAG RADIO GOES NOIR: At 2 PM Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, a strange vermillion-tinged dark shadow enveloped Austin just east of I-35, a roiling cloak of noir and blues which I unpacked out of my guitar case and a couple of olive green army field bags inherited from my father-in-law, each of which was packed with wire cutters, brass and glass tubes, strings, notes, pens, etc. — no, not the tools of an assassin or saboteur, but a blues singer and crime fiction writer. I was there at the odd corner strip center studio of KOOP-FM radio to meet Thorne Dreyer, long-time Austin radical dude, for an hour of interview, music and live reading (with music) of samples from my latest work. Thorne read three parts (including a bad cop and two girls) in the story STARS IN HER HAIR, and I played three songs, including Death Letter, Levee Camp Moan and Stones in the Coffin. A persistent ear infection has reduced my hearing by about 50 %, so, even with headphones cranked, my singing ain’t what it ought to be, but if you’d like to hear the whole interview, you can listen to the podcast here. If you have any technical questions, consult the FAQ here.

 

SXSW 2013 UPDATE: Our E-Book MeetUp, hosted by NETTIE REYNOLDS and myself, will be Tuesday,  March 12, 1:30-2:30 at Proof Annex. The event is open to SXSW Interactive and Platinum badge holders only. If you’ll be attending SXSW make your plans to attend now. We’d love to see you, and stay tuned for more updates on our SXSW 2013 presence.

More blurbs about Grave Digger Blues:

You are onto something with this, Jesse, I do believe. Probably you are several years ahead of the curve, but that day is coming and what you’ve put together shows how it’s gonna work. I like the video intro (“Johnny Heartbreak Blues”), by the way, have watched it several times and like the laid back groove on it. Listened to the soundcloud music, too, and the spoken word stuff. I can sorta experience how you want it to happen as I flip through the pdf of the text while listening to the cuts (though I’ve never been very good at reading while listening to music/lyrics). Hope you get the opportunity to try a live show presentation at some point, see how that flies. Thanks for sending this along so I could taste what you are up to. A labor of love, I suppose, until the world catches up. Which it will. But you were there first, amigo. All best luck and wishes! — Christopher Cook, author of ROBBERS and SCREEN DOOR JESUS

 

Christopher Cook is a Texas author who lives in Prague most of the time, also a friend of mine. You should check out his blog.

We also rec’d our first negative review of the book, from Candy Beauchamp, on Amazon, here. This may sound strange but I was kinda looking forward to a review of this sort. And I appreciate her reviewing the book; she even said she really wanted to like it, but…. didn’t. From the beginning, I knew that many readers out there would not get the style, would not fall into the druggy surrealistic stew of narrative, where some events may or may not be hallucinations, where  a headless supermodel, a super celebrity, is spoken of like Paris Hilton or Bob Dylan, her rumored appearances dotting the story like sightings of Big Foot or Elvis. I intentionally wrote Grave Digger Blues to separate the men from the boys, the women from the sorority girls, etc. So if you don’t like it, that’s fine, because although I have a heart as big as Antarctica, my skin is made of Teflon. Feel free to make your own comments on Amazon, but please be kind to Candy. You may want her to review your book someday.

The Headless Supermodel has recently been spotted in Austin. Which makes sense, she’s always jetting around to the hip, happening places around the world.

 

RAG RADIO GOES NOIR

Rag Radio goes dark on Friday. No, I don’t mean they’re going off the air, I mean dark as in Noir. Friday 2-3 PM, Feb. 1, I will be on the air with my guitar and some stories and a bad dude they call The Big Thorn (my informants tell me that one of his aliases is one “Thorne Dreyer” or something like that).

So The Big Thorn and My Terrible Self will be bringing you some dark sounds and mean streets, including The Last Detective at the End of the World, an excerpt from  GRAVE DIGGER BLUES , on KOOP radio, 91.7 FM, the progressive voice of Austin.

PS I hope you saw my last blog, MY FATHER TAUGHT ME ABOUT GUNS.



ON KOOP 91.7 FM IN AUSTIN AND STREAMED TO THE WORLD

Rag Radio is rebroadcast every Sunday at 10 a.m. (EST)
on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

 

 

RAG RADIO features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. Our guests include newsmakers, artists, leading thinkers, and public figures – from Austin, Texas, and around the world.

Host Thorne Dreyer was a founding editor of Austin’s historic Sixties underground newspaper The Rag, a founding editor of Space City! in Houston, an editor at LNS in New York, and a former station manager of KPFT-FM (Pacifica) in Houston. He now edits The Rag Blog, a nonprofit progressive internet newsmagazine based in Austin, and is on the board of the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. With roots in the Sixties, RAG RADIO often features content about the history of Austin’s unique counterculture and its political and literary traditions.

Rag Radio is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas. KOOP is a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station.  ragradio@koop.org.

What My Father Taught Me About Guns

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[Note: This is an expanded version of a piece written for OpEdNews.com. For other stories by me at OpEdNews.com, click here.]

The man who taught me about guns died eight years ago this month. My father was 82 years old and, up until the last six weeks of his life, he seemed unstoppable, strong as a mule, steady as a rock, always there if needed. Typically, whenever I called home, my mother would say he was outside repairing a fence, tilling the garden–or, like his very last chore, rigging up a pulley system in order to load an old clothes dryer onto the pickup bed without any assistance. This was, I should add, contrary to my mother’s admonitions.

His name was Jesse Sublett Jr., but almost everyone knew him as Jake. In official documents and to my mother, he was J.E., which saved him the trouble of being confused with his father, Jesse Sublett Sr., and the embarrassment of being known as Junior. It’s a common nickname in the South, but does anybody ever start out in life wanting to be called Junior?

Mom had quite a few health problems, and Dad doted on her. For him to precede her in death was kind of unthinkable. I always thought that he would go on caring for her as long as she was alive, not so much because of his physical condition, but out of sheer willpower.

Jake was country. Raised on a farm, sixth grade education, modest, soft-spoken. He couldn’t play a lick, but he loved music and was a fan of my own creative endeavors, no matter how weird they must have seemed to him. After my wife and I moved to Los Angeles, he was always the first one to cry when our visits came to an end.

Thus the man of few words is often recalled in verbatim. His advice to me on avoiding narcotics: “Keep your nose clean, bub.”

On his first trip to California, confronted by great the proliferation manicurist signs which said, simply “Nails,” this native of the Texas Hill Country said, “I thought they were all hardware stores.”

I also remember vividly his gentle presence, his large, scarred hands and quiet voice as he instructed my brother and me (and later, my sister, although I was on my own by then) in the arts of hunting and shooting, and everything about guns we needed to know in exchange for the privilege of using them. “Always be careful not to point your rifle in the direction of any person.” “Never shoot unless you have a clear line of sight.” “Squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk.” “Always know where the other hunters are sitting.”

All guns in our house were unloaded. The ammunition clips were even stored separately. On hunting trips, we’d gather our rifles and supplies and set out on foot from the camping site, never chambering a round until we had cleared the last gate or other obstacle. Even after that, a gun was kept on safety until the moment it was to be fired.

Jake was strict about all the protocols of handling guns, not only gun safety but cleaning and storing after use. No guns in the world could have been better maintained than the ones in our household. And there’s something about the seriousness and care he embodied as a parent that still rings in my ears, even sends chills down my spine, as I remember his instructions. These days, in particular, I keep hearing him say “Always be careful not to point your rifle in the direction of any person.”

When my wife and I first moved to Los Angeles, I remember encountering people who were offended at my gun history. Yes, I killed my first deer at age five (with my father steadying the rifle) and continued hunting into my 20s. I enjoy going to the shooting range now and then, and also take my teenage son along.

My father preached strict adherence to all game laws, although when he was young, the family observed a more relaxed approach, one best expressed by the old saying, “There are two hunting seasons: salt and pepper.” A few times we went out “headlighting” (known as jacklighting in other parts of the country), which means going out with dogs and lights to kill raccoons and other “varmints” for their hides, which fetched, as I recall, between fifty cents and a little over a dollar.

My brother and I shot doves and squirrels and when we failed to harvest enough of either to make a meal, we’d shoot some of each and Mom would make stew. Sometimes I’d hike alone in the woods, shooting birds and armadillos, rocks, trees, whatever. I regret this last part, but there it is.

My son has lived in an urban environment his entire life and the notion that a young boy needed to learn to shoot because there were no grocery stores around and even if there were, buying meat every week for our family was financially impossible. It could still be a valid thing to teach a young person, but whenever it’s something promoted by the NRA, it reeks like some rotten, bottom-dwelling creature born of desperation, greed and fear.

It was many years ago, but at one time the NRA wasn’t just a gun lobby, a PR machine that relentless promotes guns and pushes them, beyond any logic except for that of fear and greed, and pushes far too many guns that have no reasonable civilian use. There was a time when you could say the NRA was about gun safety and outdoor recreation, but now it’s more accurate to compare them to the corn syrup people hustle to inject fat in every morsel of our foods, particularly the young. Of course, it would take fewer words to compare them to crack dealers, but I’m sure that’s been done before.

The NRA constituency claims to revere family values, and the degree of truth in that idea is probably best seen their advocacy for unregulated sale of noise suppressors, which would bring a lot more kids into the hobby. And dig those happy families in the pages of Junior Shooters</em>, an industry-backed publication geared to that sweet younger demographic.

Junior Shooters touts itself as “a place for our next generation of shooting enthusiasts! We provide information on clubs, events, safety, and information for all shooting disciplines. We provide information on clubs, events, safety, and information for all shooting disciplines.” An article in Sunday’s New York Times had a few insightful comments to add about why the gun industry is working overtime to push its products these days:

Threatened by long-term declining participation in shooting sports, the firearms industry has poured millions of dollars into a broad campaign to ensure its future by getting guns into the hands of more, and younger, children.

The industry’s strategies include giving firearms, ammunition and cash to youth groups; weakening state restrictions on hunting by young children; marketing an affordable military-style rifle for “junior shooters” and sponsoring semiautomatic-handgun competitions for youths; and developing a target-shooting video game that promotes brand-name weapons, with links to the Web sites of their makers.

I don’t want to dwell on the subject of this publication right now, but I would like to offer this screen shot from the site.

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Does this shoot or blow bubbles? Is there a “Shooter Barbie” to go with it?

For those of you who know nothing about firearms, .22 is a small caliber. It’s not something that the military would use. I do think the color of this one is hideous, however, and it does look like something made by an industry desperate to shill its products to very young children. One frequent argument from the NRA crowd is that they take firearms very seriously. But does it really help teach a child to take guns seriously when they’re the color of bubblegum?

A lot of people in this country are sick of the fear-mongering propaganda being spouted by gun manufacturers, their trade groups, their lobbyists and the ill-informed public they have inflamed in the name of greed. Hunting is one thing, but if you need a clip that holds more than five rounds you should stay home, get another hobby, maybe see an eye doctor. The time for reasonable regulations on guns in this country is long past.

And if you’re arming yourself to protect yourself from the “jack-booted thugs” of the federal government, as I believe Wayne LaPierre once called them, why the heck do you still live here? You can’t bemoan the death of democracy, then pout, whine and grab your guns every time an election doesn’t go the way you wanted it. There’s a real logical disconnect there, pal.

The arguments have been made. The facts are out there. It would be nice if the gun extremists would listen for a change instead of shrilly shouting “You’re taking away my guns!” every time a proposal aimed at reducing the needless slaughter is merely suggested. I have mentioned my own history with firearms here in part because my past blogs on guns have been greeted by sadly hilarious lines like “Stop getting all your ideas about firearms from Hollywood.” Huh?

Wouldn’t it be interesting if a similar hue and cry were raised at every new incident of genocide, with every hundred acres of rain forest destroyed, whenever there appears to be another type of egregious infringement to the Bill of Rights–one of the other nine, that is?

How many of these huge fans of the 2nd Amendment are keeping busy “maintaining well-regulated militia”? I mean, not just to overthrow the democratically-elected government of the United States, but to assist the public in various other capacities, besides waving their guns in our faces? I guess, way back there on Tax Day 2009, those were supposed to be militia men, those gunsels proudly sporting firearms very near a speech by President Obama.

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In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) is always being bugged by Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.), who brandishes his pair of big .45s, but Spade disarms him without batting an eye and calls him a “gunsel,” as if it’s a term for a neutered hamster. And poor Elisha was always very effectual at playing the sap.

 

“Gunsel” is an interesting word. Read about its origins here, or below.

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A couple more bits on this digression: Hammett was obviously swept up in the times here, and his writing did not exactly bristle with 21st century egalitarianism, i.e., there are lots of jokes that could be construed as homophobic. The “gunsel” insult is only one, but he does exude a deep contempt (which no doubt was informed by his experiences as a private eye during rough times) for punks with guns, as in this retort to The Fat Man, Kasper Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet).

SPADE: I hope you’re not letting yourself be influenced by the guns these pocket-edition desperadoes are waving around, because I’ve practiced taking guns from these boys before; so we’ll have no trouble there.

Here’s another:

SPADE: Here. (Hands him Wilmer’s guns.) You shouldn’t let him go around with these on him. He might get himself hurt.

GUTMAN: Well, well, what’s this?

SPADE: A crippled newsie took ‘em away from him. I made him give ‘em back.

 

End of digression. You might have already intuited this next part. My father, Jake Sublett, a dedicated Democrat, big fan of the Clintons and Barack Obama, was also a longtime NRA member who would have been dismayed and disgusted with that organization today.

Punk with guns. (Photo Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons)

 

No matter what you think the 2nd Amendment says, it does not say it’s OK to wave your gun around near the President. We lived in Johnson City when Lyndon B. Johnson was President. That was after Kennedy was assassinated.

Random guns + Presidents = not a good thing.

Who missed that memo?

The so-great-it-oughta -be-number-one 2nd Amendment also does not say it’s a great idea to have everybody come heeled to school, church, funerals or your mother’s colonoscopy.

Another thing to consider about the holy, the awesome, almighty, gold-encrusted 2nd: Do you really see the Founding Fathers guaranteeing every citizen, no matter their criminal background or mental competency, the right to buy a cannon? A whole bunch of cannons? Selling them at village gun shows and the like? Only a nincompoop would think so.

The GOP is an endangered creature. That’s largely due to its stupid ideas and the fact that its main demographic could be described as white men who fear black presidents and said group happens to be aging out of the planet? Small wonder that the Guns Over People party receives boatloads more gun-supporting cash than Democrats. Which seems like a waste, since it’s been decades since so-called liberal Democrats have posed hardly a whisper of a threat to the gun-lovingest people of our nation. Chris Solizza of the Washington Post brings in the numbers with a series of charts in his January 16, , 2013 blog piece, “How the NRA Influences Congress in Six Charts.”

In the past month the Post has published a number of other articles with detailed, useful information on this topic which should be of interest to anyone who would like to see a little less gun carnage in this country, and does not believe that the blame lies with “gun-free zones,” Hollywood or an “elitist hypocrite” –NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre’s term for President Obama.

Of particular interest to me was Joel Achenbach’s series which began with “How NRA’s True Believers Converted a Marksmanship Group Into a Mighty Gun Lobby,”

Even the very basic idea of universal background checks before gun purchases makes Wayne LaPierre see red. He says it’s because “criminals will never submit to them.” Ever notice that the NRA gets a lot of their ideas by studying things criminals won’t do? With these guys it’s always more guns, bigger guns, guns everywhere, all the time.”

I welcomed Aurenbach’s well-researched series, as I have wanted to write an essay like this one for some time. I particularly appreciated his explanation on how the NRA became so radical and intractable, because in years past, it wasn’t an evil caricature, a sad, bizarre cartoon. Have we mentioned the fact that Ronald Reagan favored gun control, or that George H.W. Bush was so disgusted with the NRA he tore up his membership? Charlton Heston stuck with “em, but God bless the old toupee-topped Moses, at that point in his career, he wasn’t exactly being inundated with other offers.

Good investigative journalism has already been done by others, so I wanted to say something about my father the simple common sense and sense of class he embodies for me. In a way I hate to repeat his admonition about being careful where your gun is pointed, but seriously, I’m sick of the NRA and gun-weirdos pointing their guns and their hysterical fears at the rest of us.

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I don’t normally like to pose with a gun, but it’s part of this story.

A couple of years before he died, my father gave me an early heirloom, a Colt .32 revolver. Although not as striking as some old revolvers, it’s a neat looking gun, and it gives off a nice frontier vibe.

The gun came to my father, and his father before that, from the collection of my great uncle William Winthrop Sublett. He was born in Texas and later migrated to the mining communities of New Mexico and from there to Redding, California, where he was a miner and rancher. He also served as sheriff of Shasta County from 1922-1943. I like finding stories in archives that mention him, like the one about a car chase and shoot-out with armed bandits in 1925, and apprehending escaped convicts from San Quentin in 1939.

I also like the story of how Sheriff Bill got the gun. He confiscated it from a bad man and never gave it back. They didn’t call it “fascism” or “communism” back then. They didn’t even call it gun control.

They called it common sense.

Not a toy.

Jack of Diamonds + Love & Other Stunts

UPDATE: I added “Fire in the Disco” to my little jukebox.

Fire in the Disco

A short post today, first up being my newest rendition of a very old song called “Jack of Diamonds.”

In case the embed below doesn’t work, here’s the youtube link.

Now here’s a piece of art by my pal the actor Gary Warner Kent. It’s called “Tusitala,” and starts with the line: “I Thought I Saw Jesus This Morning.” I love this and I think you’ll love it too.

Here’s the youtube link in case the embed below doesn’t work.

Next you should check out the film project on Gary Kent called “Love & Other Stunts” which is in the fundraising mode now on indieGoGo.com. Check it out here and I think you will be glad you did. It’s a real worthy artistic-type cause.

Gary Kent, tough guy, cool cat

The pitch starts off thusly:

The most interesting man in the world

I was at a writing conference in the late ’90s when I met a white-haired hustler with a Burt Reynolds mustache and a knowing grin. He introduced himself as Gary Kent and told me about a cult biker film he’d starred in called Satan’s Sadists. That night I tracked down a copy of the film and watched it, then I tracked down Gary and wrote a couple of articles about his unique film career doubling Jack Nicholson and Robert Vaughan, and staging stunts and special effects sequences for notable directors Peter Bogdanovich, Monte Hellman, Richard Rush, Al Adamson and Don Coscarelli for movies including Hell’s Angels On Wheels, Psych-out, Targets, Bubba Ho-tep, and the noir Westerns The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind.

Also check out Gary’s blog. I happened to meet Gary Kent at a screening of “The Cockfighter,” a Monte Hellman film starring Warren Oates and also the late Charles Willeford, who wrote the book and the screenplay, and is one of my favorite writers. This screening also included a showing of one of Hellman’s other films, I forget which one, but it was fabulous. So, anyway, if you meet a real hip guy at a real hip film with all these other associations of cool, you remember. But Gary is a memorable guy who has led an interesting life anyway.

By the way, I hope you viewed yesterday’s post. It includes a video of another blues song I’ve been working on (“High Water Everywhere Part 2″ by Charley Patton) and an admonition for all of you not to buy GRAVE DIGGER BLUES if you feel that you are not hip enough for it, because in fact, it might be TOO WEIRD for you. I’m always looking out for you, see?

GRAVE DIGGER BLUES may in fact be too weird for you. Maybe you’d rather listen to Celine Dion and wear elephant plaid to your high school reunion.

GRAVE DIGGER BLUES MAY BE TOO WEIRD FOR YOU

 

HOW MANY OTHER AUTHORS DO YOU KNOW??????????

Who just give you stuff like this, for the hell of it? Here’s a song, a pretty great song, I think, called FIRE IN THE DISCO, that was pretty big for my band, The Secret Six, back in the 80s. You know, the EIGHTIES — Ecstasy, Madonna, big hair, dance, dance, dance??? Just click this link: FIRE IN THE DISCO and you can download this song for free.

I dig things that are cool.

HOW MANY OTHER AUTHORS DO YOU KNOW??????

I’m not asking to be your favorite author. I just hope you read books, period. I like things that are cool. Coolsville. Supercool. And then when I find these things, I work on it; I want to know more, to be able to emulate this new, favorite thing of mine in some small way. Like when I suddenly discovered Charley Patton this summer. I’m still working on this tune, and it’s rough. But as a part of my plan to get better at playing it, I’m laying myself on the line here — on YouTube, that is, to expose my faults and prod myself into getting better.

 

Here’s the link, in case the embed didn’t work: “HIGH WATER EVERYWHERE PART 2″

“High Water Everywhere Part Two” by Charley Patton, on my new single cone resonator guitar by Hot Rod Steel, from my pal Lenny Gerthoffer in Santa Barbara. Open G tuning, capo on the 3rd fret, making the song in the key of B flat.

The Great Charley Patton

HOW MANY OTHER AUTHORS DO YOU KNOW??????

Who offer you free mp3s of real cool songs as they casually mention their new book, which, if you are a cool, hip person, you really might want to check out, say, by hitting the link to Amazon’s Kindle store to download the free sample of GRAVE DIGGER BLUES, where you’ll find a hefty dose of noir fiction with sex, violence and surreal visions of our world sliding down into fiery oblivion. In a seductively lyrical manner, naturally. Or you might hit the iTunes link, where you not only sample the hardboiled prose of said novella GRAVE DIGGER BLUES, but the Blues Deluxe Edition for iPad also gives you a blues sound track, with original blues theme songs composed for the book, a couple of short musical video greetings in blues stylings, and a selection of audio chapters with a blues soundtrack composed by Johnny Reno + My Terrible Self, i.e., the author and musician, Jesse Sublett. PLUS the iPad allows you to enlarge the graphics for a closer look and, of course, the iPad has great color resolution and all that.

My great pal, Johnny Reno, produced and composed much of the soundtrack material on the audio chapters of GRAVE DIGGER BLUES.

THIS IS NOT AN ADVERTISEMENT OR A PLEA FOR YOU TO PURCHASE ANYTHING

We’re just talking here. I’m throwing a few ideas at you, dear reader. If you want to hear some personal stories, I’ve got em. It’s been a real strange year. I’ll write about that later. Soon. Plus I’ve got a new short story I’ll lay on you. Keep an eye out for “CURE FOR INSOMNIA.”

DO YOU, DEAR READER, FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER?

How can you not?

https://twitter.com/Jesse_Sublett

aka

@Jesse_Sublett

I mean, fun things happen on Twitter. Like this, below, in case you missed it in my last post (“Me & Margaret Atwood”):

 

 

Unlike other E-Book authors I don’t plead. In fact, GRAVE DIGGER BLUES is probably TOO WEIRD FOR YOU.amazon.com/dp/B00A886DU0

— Jesse Sublett (@Jesse_Sublett) January 25, 2013

 

 

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Screen shot from the chapter “Heartbreaker” in the iPad version of Grave Digger Blues

THE BOOK IN QUESTION, BELOW, Can be had for only $.99 for all you bargain hunters, who don’t like wild visuals like the exotic women, walking catfish, atomic explosions, and stuff like that, included in the other more pricey editions ($5.99 for Blues Deluxe iPad and $4.99 for Kindle), or you don’t have a Kindle, iPad, iPhone or Blackberry, or MacBook, (all of which can be used to enjoy the Kindle edition)… anyway, the Bare Bones edition is just text, and you can read it on just about anything. Probably even most microwave ovens and digital thermostats.

GRAVE DIGGER BLUES, mind blowing pulp fiction

Smashwords 99-cent Bare Bones Edition.

Jane Greer in Out of the Past. This aptly captures the notion that we are all doomed.

In the same vein, daddy-o.

Nothing captures the aura of doom like a dome-light with a desperately hooked man and the lady in question.

The aptly named Tempest Storm

ME & MARGARET ATWOOD

A collage I made with Mata Hari (left) meeting Margaret Atwood (right)

The digital era has given birth to a brave new world for publishing, but who cares about them, what we really care about here are the authors. Some of us are doing great, and a great many of us are, well, wondering what it might take to sell a few books, maybe even quit that detested day job. This thing, which is given many collective names, including E-books, E-publishing, Kindle, Nook, iBook, and so forth, seems to herald a world of new opportunities for some of us writers who have so far not hit The Big Pay Day.

Let’s not get too cynical just yet. Some e-authors out there have tasted success, but it’s still a tough business to get a break in. Even with the help of Twitter, where e-authors can Tweet “Buy my new Kindle novel on Amazon for free…” every five minutes. Or more. I rarely tweet anything like, for example, “Buy the fabulous Blues Deluxe Edition of GRAVE DIGGER BLUES for iPad on iTunes now, or you’re a hopeless nerd” or “Buy GRAVE DIGGER BLUES on Kindle, with its super-weird novella + more than 100 great, sexy photos & graphics right now or DIE,” more than two, maybe three times a day.

Margaret Atwood, who has 367,000 Twitter followers, retweeted me, who has somewhat fewer follower.

Back on December 27, Lois alerted me to this story on NPR that might help me get a leg up on the e-book world market. She heard Margaret Atwood, the Canadian author of best-selling novels The Handmaid’s Tale, The Blind Assassin, and others, being interviewed about her new novel, Postitron, which is being serialized on byliner.com. By logging onto Byliner, which is free, readers can download new short stories and chapters of serial novels to their digital nightstand to read later, and can also read blogs from various big-name authors and other literary news. Margaret has embraced the new model with a bear-hug, it seems. She’s also got a project on Wattpad called Happy Zombie Sunrise Home, written collaboratively with Naomi Alderman.

And during this interview, Margaret said that she even retweets authors who send her the URL of their own novels. I found this hard to believe, but Lois assured me that that’s what Margaret said. I found the interview, listened again, and sure enough, that’s what she said. So I tweeted Margaret Atwood, who happens to have 367,000+ followers (and I have a somewhat smaller number) and she did it. She retweeted my tweet.

Thank you, Margaret. She is pretty hip, after all. I mean, check out this graphic on her Twitter page.

Margaret Atwood channels her inner Madonna, or is it the other way around?

Bearing that in mind, I thought I should up my game and try to return the favor, so I created the graphic collage that appears at the top of this post, showing the great World War I courtesan and suspected spy Mata Hari meeting Margaret Atwood, the best-selling Canadian author who retweeted my tweet about Grave Digger Blues, which, by the way, you can try a free sample and then perhaps buy (complete with 100+ photos & graphics, a blues soundtrack, select audio chapters + some video) for your iPad on the iTunes/iBookstore, or for Kindle and oodles of other devices on Amazon (novella + 100+ photos & graphics), or the $.99 Bare Bones version (text only, no photos or music) at Smashwords.

So I figured it would be the gentlemanly thing to go ahead and show my appreciation by creating this modest and admittedly rather crude (I don’t have Photoshop, just Apple Preview) collage of two real interesting women. I tweeted the image to Margaret a couple of weeks ago, so I should be hearing from her soon, hopefully around the same time I get the new sales reports showing just how much her retweet did for sales of GRAVE DIGGER BLUES…. the hippest hardboiled apocalyptic detective and jazz novella that’s ever challenged you to… dig it.

Have I mentioned that we’ll be plugging this baby with an E-Book Meet Up at SXSW 2013?

GRAVE DIGGER BLUES may in fact be too weird for you. Maybe you’d rather listen to Celine Dion and wear elephant plaid to your high school reunion.

INAUGURATION 2013

What a great day in America. We’re watching the inauguration and having a private ball at our home. Lois made chocolate mousse for a party of 17. The recipe (Nigella Lawson) was for 4 servings. I said, “Just quadruple it… or quintuple it, whatever…”

Nigella’s recipe was for 4 servings. We quadrupled it for 17, and had THIS much left over. Hooray!

I think we got the Octomom results. We brought a large crystal bowl of mousse to the party, and it was a big hit, with lots left over. PLUS we had another bowl left over for our home use… our teenager, Dashiell, arrives home from his LA vacation tonight, so I’m sure he’ll help us finish the rest.

How many Son House fans out there, like me, are also Katy Perry fans?

And I recorded my own little rendition of the Son House classic, “Levee Camp Moan,” and wanted to share my humble effort. Just got this guitar, a Hot Rod Steel 14 fretter, single cone, bell brass body, saddle made from 200 year old wood, from my pal Lenny Gerthoffer’s shop, Vintage Nationals in Santa Barbara, CA.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day, Happy Inauguration Day… and may the GOP / Tea Party /NRA someday figure out that being human without a soul is no way to go.

 

ADD GUN NUTS, REMOVE LOGIC, SERVE

UPDATE 1.8.13: GRAVE DIGGER BLUES, Bare Bones Edition now available at Smashwords for $0.99. ”Bare Bones” means text only, but with the same insane narrative on hyperdrive packed with hardboiled action, surrealism, homicide blondes, jazz, blues and lyrical brutality, but bargain priced for those of you who don’t care to see 100+ photos of sexy women, doomed private eyes, urban wastelands and pix of Dick Cheney in drag, Reagan-faced monkeys and giant walking catfish.

For all the info you can handle about my favorite creation, check the GRAVE DIGGER BLUES home page.

And a little note to my friends and fans: I wish you’d check out this book and maybe even buy it. I think you’d like it. If you have something new for me to check out, let me know, and I will return the favor.

GRAVE DIGGER BLUES may in fact be too weird for you. Maybe you’d rather listen to Celine Dion and wear elephant plaid to your high school reunion.

UPDATE 1.7.13: MORE POSTS ON OPEDNEWS.COM FROM MY SECESSION CHRONICLE: These new pieces ran in the last week or so and concentrate mainly on the discussion (if you want to call it that) about bringing some sanity to the topic of guns in the USA. I’ll continue to write OpEds for this fabulous progressive news site and post notices of those articles here and on the SECESSION CHRONICLE page. See “THE TOWER MASSACRE, GUN CONTROL & AN VISIT FROM PLANET n-RA” here, and “IT’S OK, HONEY, HIS GUN HAS A NOISE SUPPRESSOR” here.

On August 1, 1966, Charlie Whitman introduced the world to a new concept: the public gun massacre. The NRA has an answer: more guns for EVERYBODY, EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME. OH, JOY!

UPDATE 1.4.13: SXSW 2013 is inevitable, isn’t it? I will be hosting an E-BOOK MEET UP during SXSW Interactive with my digital guru, NETTIE REYNOLDS. That’s all I have right now, as I’m in the process of wading through the SXSW production thingie to get things set, but basically it will be a one hour session for anybody and everybody involved in digital publishing –authors, publishers, cover artists, publicists, etc.–to meet, exchange business cards or whatever, talk, moan, gush, groove.

UPDATE 1.6.13: I GOT A NEW GUITAR. I’M SO HAPPY NOW.